Ten Years, Ten People: Beth Doyle

Your humble author rounds out the last of the Ten Years, Ten People series. I am the Head of Conservation Services and have been at Duke for eight years. I work with some amazing people and some equally amazing collections. The best part of my job right now is bringing you into the Underground to show you, dear reader, what it is that we do below decks. I hope you have found our sites informative and fun to visit.

In this video I share a personal story of unexpectedly finding an image of one of my ancestors in our collections in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collection Library.

Paper Crumbs

We just finished our fall semester Care and Handling sessions wherein we give out tips on safely handling library materials. We also display our "show of horrors" which covers amongst other things torn pages, food spills, damaged spines, and of course brittle paper.

These sessions are valuable to us because we get to talk to the staff and students who are our partners in keeping our materials in good condition and ready for the next reader. A great many items that come to the lab do so because they have circulated. If damaged, an alert staff member recognizes that it should go to Conservation and sets it aside for us. We could not be successful in our efforts to keep materials circulating without their help.

We also hold these sessions to get feedback on our services and how we can help create effective and efficient workflows. Over the years we have heard some comments about how much boxing we do and the perception that we prefer to box things rather than fix them. This is why we put brittle materials into our show of horrors. At some point, paper becomes too brittle to do anything for it. It cannot be sewn or glued, sometimes it can barely even be handled without self destructing.

We make every effort to repair the books and manuscripts in our care but sometimes we simply don't have any durable repair options due to their fragility. This is why we make thousands of protective enclosures every year, a good portion of these are for brittle items. Protective enclosures keep pieces together while we make reformatting or replacement decisions, it protects the already fragile book from further damage while checked out or while on the shelf, and it alerts people to handle these books just a little more gently.

A box can sometimes be a hindrance to use. But it is our job to balance the needs of the reader with the needs and preservation of the object. This balancing act is not always an easy thing to do, but hopefully our patrons understand that it is a far better thing to have access to a brittle book than having no access to that book at all.

Care and Handling Training

Pop quiz: What is the best method of removing a book from the shelf?

This week we are presenting our annual week-long Care and Handling/Identifying Common Damage demonstrations. Each year we present our show of horrors to help new library staff and student assistants learn to identify damaged books. We also provide quick tips and helpful hints that can minimize potential damage when items are handled during our day-to-day work.

What we hope comes across is that everyone has a role to play in getting our materials to the shelf safely. We appreciate everyone's help in keeping our collections around for a very long time.

If you work in the library, stop in to see a demonstration. Our sessions for the rest of the week are as follows (sessions are held in the conservation lab-Perkins 023-unless otherwise indicated):

10/19, 4pm, 6pm

10/20, 11:30am, 3pm (at Lily Library)

10/21, 10am (at Smith Warehouse), 1pm

10/22, 9:30am, 2pm

The answer: push the books on either side of the one you want inwards, and grasp the covers. If you pull on the top of the book to remove it, the spine is likely to tear.

Mastering Craft

Mastering Craft: Interpreting Historic Bookbindings

Our new exhibit highlights work from the Triangle Research Libraries (TRLN) Master Bookbinders Group. Our group consists of staff members from the conservation labs of UNC-Chapel Hill, NC State and Duke University libraries.

Its purpose is to research historic bookbindings so we can deepen our understanding of the history of the book, and develop knowledge and skills that help inform our daily conservation work.

Creating binding models is a traditional form of learning the craft of bookbinding and the history of the book. Each quarter we assign a binding style to one or two of our members. Our volunteer teachers research the history of the binding and how it was traditionally made, and demonstrate it to the rest of the group. We then make our models, sometimes recreating the binding exactly and sometimes interpreting them more artistically.

The exhibit will be up through January 2011, just outside the Conservation Lab in Perkins Library 023. It is open when the library is open.

Ten Years, Ten People: Meg Brown

In our ongoing series celebrating our ten year anniversary, we bring you the next installment of TYTP. Meg Brown is one of our Special Collections Conservators, she is also the library's Exhibits Coordinator. In fact, today we will be installing the new exhibit, "Books + Art", in the Perkins Gallery, just outside the the Perk. Be sure to stop by the library to see the new exhibit, and be sure to catch Meg's favorite preservation story in her video interview.

Happy Anniversary Devil's Tale!

Today, October 8th, marks the one year anniversary of the launch of The Devil's Tale, our sister blog from the Rare Books, Manuscript and Special Collections Library (and University Archives!).

To celebrate we bring our readers a list of some of our favorite Devil's Tale posts over the past year.

"Welcome to the Devil's Tale," their very first post.

"A Holiday Recipe From Us To You," because no celebration is complete without frozen cheese.

"Join The Preservation Underground." Our great friend Amy (keeper of all things Devil's Tale) named Preservation Underground and has been a great wealth of help and support. Thanks Amy, keep up the great work!

"Boxing the Blue Devil," a creepy gift that keeps on giving. A big thanks to RBMSCL for all the wonderful things they send us for Boxing Day.

As you may know, the traditional one-year anniversary gift is paper. As our one-year gift we give Devil's Tale this historic image of us working on a broadside (paper!) from the RBMSCL library collection. This happens to also be from our first post.

May you have another interesting year ahead of you and congratulations on your achievements Devil's Tale!

What Month Is It?

In October we gather ourselves together to celebrate all that is good and important, like the North Carolina State Fair and All Hallows Eve. But did you know that among other celebrations October is:

American Archives Month
National Medical Librarians Month
National Cybersecurity Awareness Month
National Graphic Novel Writing Month
National Arts and Humanities Month
National Book Month
National Breast Cancer Awareness Month
National Dental Hygiene Month
National Fire Safety Month

What are you celebrating this month?

Image from the Duke University History of Medicine Collection exhibits website.